Does a tree falling make a noise if no-one is in the woods when it falls?

A man sits in a café in Sai King watching the sea. There is a light breeze in the air and he feels the warmth of the sun on his skin and smells the saltiness of the sea. He is drinking orange juice and can smell his coffee being brewed and the fresh smell of toasted bread. You are nearby reading the SCMP. When you look up a few minutes later you notice that he isn't moving. You learn later that he has had a sensory breakdown.

First the rich taste of the coffee disappeared and then he couldn’t tell if it was hot or cold. He then dropped the coffee cup to the floor, it crashed to the ground burning him on his arm – though he did not feel it or hear the cup smash. Within seconds he was overcome by silence and darkness…..

How does that story make you feel….

What are your 5 senses? If for some reason you had to lose

one ofyour senses:Which one would you be most willing

to lose?Which one would you be least willing

to lose?Why?

Stimuli Sense Receptors

Sensation Response (example of meaning attributed)

Electromagnetic energy 400-700nm

Eyes, retina Light and colour.

That’s my dog.

Vibrations between 20 and 20,000Hz

Ear, auditory nerve

Sound Ah, the Chinese National anthem

Odour molecules in gas form

Nose, olfactory receptor neurones

Smell Mmm fresh Char Siu Pork

Chemical composition

Tongue, chemoreceptor cells

Sweet, salty, sour and bitter

This congee is salty!

Pressure, temperature

Skin, nerve endings

Hot, cold, textures, pressure, pain.

Whoa this coffee is hot!

Knowledge based on perceptual experience

Get into groups of 3 based on a common subject you all study.

Identify how and where you use your senses for that IB subject.

Compare with other IB subjects. Do you think that perception is a

more important source of knowledge than others? Are there any areas of knowledge in which it plays no role?

Perception is a passive and relatively straightforward process which gives us an accurate picture of reality. Colours, sounds and smells exist ‘out there’ and the act of observation does not affect what is observed.

Is this an adequate explanation for our perception of the world?

What would happen if you cut your optic nerve?

Brain has an enormous task of synthesing all those blip, blip, blips into our conscience experience of the world

Your whole world is made up of blip, blip, blips

How the brain constructs the ‘real’ world from mere blip, blip, blips is one of the greatest mysteries of modern science and philosophy

How do we know? Is the sky blue the same colour for everyone.

Even if you could see someone elses ‘blue’ (which you cant because then it would be your blue!) would it be the same?

Optical illusions

Can you see that the brain always tries to construct a plausible story for what is going on that goes beyond the visual sense data input.

I cdnoult bblveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrdwaht I was rdanieg. The phaonmeal pweor of theHmuan mnid! Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch

atCmabrigdeUinervitisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteersin a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the fristand lsat ltteer be in the rghit palce. The rset can be ataotl mses and you can still raed it wouthit a porbelm.Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed erveylteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig

huh?Yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!

There are several interpretations for many of the optical illusions, therefore is there another interpretation for the entire world?

One that is entirely beyond humans and one that we will never know?

Maybe we will never know the ‘real world’

Find out about the sensory receptors of three of the following:

bees, buzzards, chameleons, crabs, dolphins, elephants, grasshoppers, star-nosed moles, pigeons, rabbits, snakes, fish, bats, sharks,

Write about how these organisms would differ in the way they perceive the world compared to how you perceive the world.

Finished files are the result of years of scientific study combined with the experience of many years.

Count the number of ‘F’s in this sentence

Many of you will have missed out the ‘f’ in of

Why?Language is to blame! ‘of’ sounds like ‘ov’ Language influences how we

interpret our senses

Why did you give the answer you gave?

Is it because of culture and language?

Are there more colours?

Perception goes far beyond, seeing or hearing or any other sense

It involves interpretation, this is something we generally have control over

We see largely what we expect to see, this usually works because our brains are very well adapted to their environment

Factors which affect interpretation include language, paradigms and cultural expectations

There is a subjective element, the world we see only exists in our minds

Our perception gives us, in our minds, structures which aren’t necessarily there

What factors affect our perception?Emotions, culture, language,

education, training………………Tasks from van de Lagemaat p91-93

A child dying in poverty as seen by a:Doctor: An economistA social workerThe child’s fatherA sunset as seen by a:Religious figureA painterA farmerA physicist

A tree as seen by a:BiologistLoggerEnvironmentalistNative American

Explain how education and training can affect what we perceive:

Biologist looking down a microscope

To what extent do you think that the culture

you come from affects the way in which you

see the world?

In what emotional state do you think we see

the world with the greatest clarity?

RealThe poster held by aprotester was created,unintentionally, by a postermaker in Bangladesh. Hedownloaded a picture ofOsama bin Laden from theweb that showed Bin Ladensitting next to 'evil Bert'. Hedidn't realize the satirical

intent ofthe picture, and so included

it inthe poster.

RealThe cat with the

strangeeyes is real, and hername is Queeny. Shelives in Bangalore,India. Her picture

wastaken in September,2003 for Reuters.

Real The x-ray is quite real.

It shows the stomach of an Israeli woman who accidentally swallowed a fork after inserting it down her throat in order to remove a cockroach! The x-ray was taken in July 2003.

Hoax The photo was

originally a single waterspout was taken in June 2001 in the Gulf of Mexico. Two more waterspouts were added to the photograph.

Hoax A postcard created

by Alfred Stanley Johnson in 1911. The children posed with wooden props and the melon slice was cut and pasted into the picture to create the illusion of a giant melon slice.

RealThis is a photograph

ofa gym in San Diego.

HoaxLouis Vuitton is notselling designer

SARSmasks. The mask in

thisimage is a digitalcreation.

RealThis photo was takenon the Earlham Road

inNorwich.

Undergroundchalk mines caused amassive sink-hole toappear in the road.

HoaxIf you look closely youcan see that the

sectionof the picture with thebears in it was

digitallyinserted into a scene

ofa suburban house.

HoaxAn image created bynature photographerRalph Clevenger. It'sactually a composite

offour differentphotographs taken inAlaska, Antarctica,

andCalifornia.

RealA real, unaltered

phototaken by

photographerKurt Jones on April

19,2003 But that's adolphin in the wave...not a shark!

How do our beliefs and expectations affect the

way we perceive events / things?

Test knowing the colour, what flavour are

the sweets?Test not knowing the colour. Can you

stillidentify the flavour?How do the senses interrelate?

See p94 for text and task

DVD – Surprising studies of visual awareness Sense perception is ‘attention dependent’,

you only see that to which you attend. If something occurs outside your scope of attention, even if its perfectly visible you wont see or notice it.

Sense perception is selective. Changes that affect the meaning of any scene are more likely to be noticed, other changes are ignored. Fancy dress in a normal setting.

The brain does not build up detailed internal models of a scene, we assume our brain has a complete, coherent representation of the scene.

Is the mind an objective recorder of events or is perceptual processes not structured to record data but to organise meaning?

What does the mind do? Does it organise fragments into meaningful

and relevant ways into a web of beliefs about what is real and what isn’t? (Real or Hoax). Is it put into context?

Is this a weakness or an advantage? Are we driven to find meaning?

Reading faces – do we rely on them to find meaning?

What if we don’t find meaning?

Would you invest in this company?

The Gestalt Principle In court why do we rely on eye-witness testimony? Is

it reliable? Blind artists or deaf musicians, how can they know? Context look at the article “Pearls Before Breakfast’ –

The Washington Post Research and explain 4 optical illusions,how they work How magicians exploit the maxim ‘the hand is quicker

than the eye’. Sleights of Mind The New York Times The limits of human perception – mixed feelings The artist Rene Magritte How attitudes toward people of color are reinforced in

journalistic and advertising images.